The Gaia space probe has unveiled its latest discoveries in its quest to map the Milky Way in unprecedented detail.
The probe is surveying nearly two million stars and revealing mysterious "starquakes" which sweep across the fiery giants like vast tsunamis.
The mission's third data set "revolutionises our understanding of the galaxy," the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
"It's the Swiss Army knife of astrophysics - there is not a single astronomer who does not use its data, directly or indirectly," said Francois Mignard, a member of the Gaia team.
Some of the map's new insights are close to home, such as a catalogue of more than 156,000 asteroids in our Solar System "whose orbits the instrument has calculated with incomparable precision," Mr Mignard said.
Our @ESAGaia observatory has been mapping our galaxy since 2013, creating the most accurate and complete multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way. Today the third data set was released. #GaiaDR3 pic.twitter.com/FwK5fm4jw9
— ESA (@esa) June 13, 2022
Gaia also sees beyond the Milky Way, spotting 2.9 million other galaxies as well as 1.9 million quasars - the bright hearts of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes.
The Gaia spacecraft is nestled in a strategically positioned orbit 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where it has been watching the skies since it was launched by the ESA in 2013.
"Gaia scans the sky and picks up everything it sees," said astronomer Misha Haywood of the Paris Observatory.
In #GaiaDR3 @ESAGaia spotted starquakes that change the shapes of stars!
— ESA Science (@esascience) June 13, 2022
They cause a star's surface to move while it rotates as shown in this animation. The frequency of the rotations and pulsations was increased to make them audible for humans. https://t.co/bIFyhbgkgv pic.twitter.com/hhlM9bCOgw
But it can still only detect around one percent of the stars in the Milky Way, which is about 100,000 light years across.
The probe is equipped with two telescopes as well as a billion-pixel camera, which captures images sharp enough to gauge the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 1,000 kilometres.
It also has a range of other instruments that allow it to not just map the stars, but measure their movements, chemical compositions and ages.
